From here to infinity - the lemniscate

Did you know what the 'proper' name for an infinity symbol was? I didn't, until earlier this year. It is a "lemniscate" (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, p. 818). The definition provided for the diacritical character, lemniscate, is a mathematical term which - surprisingly - means "adorned with ribbons", used to show "certain closed curves, having a general resemblance to the figure 8", as an "elliptic functions first investigated by Gauss" (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, p. 818), thus explaining the link to a Gaussian curve. Nice!

Why might we want to use the infinity symbol in 'normal' writing? Well, for myself, I wanted to do a bit of database-speak. In databases we get a one to one relationship (which gets shown as 1:1), or a one to many relationship (shown as - you guessed it! - 1:∞). 

So , if we are wanting to use the lemniscate symbol, it can be quite tricky to find out how to get it on our keyboards. Even trying to find it in the symbol area is not that easy - we usually have to hunt around quite a bit, scrolling down all the endless font alphabets installed on my PC until I magically don't flip past the ONE character set that contains the lemniscate diacritical. 

However, I have found a keyboard shortcut - which while quite clunky - at least allows us to enter the symbol without endless scrolling in the Symbols dialogue box.

If we are on a PC, simply key the characters "221E" on the keyboard, highlight them, then key Alt & X. This will convert "221E" into the infinity symbol.

It would be nice if it were simpler. But at least this works.

Sam

References:

Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., Vol VIII Interval-Looie). Clarendon Press.